[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvYsnJuoYZ8&w=507&h=370]

A clear and compelling promotional video by the Dan Region of Towns in Tel-Aviv for their transformation of the Hiriya Landfill into a 2000-acre park focused on environmental sustainability.  Sound like a familiar type of project? The many folks involved in planning, building and educating about the site and the lessons it can teach have been great supporters of the Freshkills Park project. 

The City Parks Alliance (CPA) is seeking nominations for a new feature on their website that will highlight a new “Frontline” park every month during the year of 2012. Parks will be selected based on their leaders’ contribution to “creating economic, environmental and social capital through new kinds of partnerships.”

Tuesday night’s talk at the Arsenal by Marty Bellew was a terrific history of landfills in New York City, culminating with the story of Fresh Kills.  The context of other landfills really brought home the outsize scope of operations at Fresh Kills–no other site in the city even came close to the same acreage and garbage volume. 

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues tomorrow evening, at the Arsenal in Central Park, with Martin Bellew, the man responsible for ensuring environmental compliance during the closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill. Mr. Bellew began working for the New York City Department of Sanitation in 1983 and worked his way up to oversee the closure of several of the city’s incinerators and landfills.

The New York Times reports on Pulau Semakau, the island that serves as Singapore’s only landfill–and one of its premier eco-tourism destinations.  Solid waste is incinerated on mainland Singapore and sent to the island via covered barges. The ash is then transferred by truck into an active “cell,” which has been sectioned off and emptied of sea water.

The WildLab is an iPhone app that allows bird-watching citizens and students to contribute to research about bird populations and distributions. The app helps institutions like the Cornell Lab of Ornithology develop mobile strategies for citizen science initiatives, engaging learners with curricula and projects that contribute to scientific research.

Four new species of bees have been identified in New York State. Among them is  Lasioglossum gotham, discovered at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, as small as a grain of rice. It burrows its home underground. The species was distinguished  from other tiny look-alikes through DNA bar coding and digital imaging.

As of summer 2011, the City of Portland, Oregon has placed a ban on single-use non-biodegradable plastic bags.  The City anticipates the ban will reduce use and subsequent landfilling of plastic bags by millions. The ban does not apply to all vendors in Portland; it is limited to stores grossing over $2 million annually or exceeding 10,000 square feet in size. 

As a part of the US Navy’s initiative to receive 50% of its energy from alternative sources, California’s Miramar Marine Corps Air Station has signed a 15-year power supply agreement with Miramar Landfill, located adjacent to the base. The Navy and the City of San Diego will work in conjunction with New York-based Fortistar Methane Group to harvest enough methane  from the landfill–yielding about 3.2 MW–to power approximately 2,461 homes, nearly half of the air station’s energy needs.

With landscape architects riding a wave of creative post-industrial reimagination in New York City–rail lines, concrete plants and landfills are all turning green–it was perhaps inevitable that underground park spaces were next. And so it goes that a team of design speculators have taken on the challenge of re-envisioning the Lower East Side’s former Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal as a sun-lit subterranean park, dubbed “The Delancey Underground.” 

The New York Times profiles Ed Toth, Director of the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), a greenhouse and nursery operation that provides seed and plant material for restoration projects across the city’s 1,700 parks. 

A recent study by scientists at the Wildlife Conservation Society has found that urban parks are comparable stopover landscapes to non-urban sites in providing refueling grounds for migrating birds. Researchers examined migrant stopover biology in Prospect Park, Inwood Park and Bronx Park to better understand how birds use city parks during migration.

This Wednesday evening, the Staten Island Greenbelt Nature Center hosts its annual meeting, coupled with a book launch for the recently released High Rock and the Greenbelt: The Making of New York City’s Largest Park.  The book chronicles the history of the Greenbelt’s formation.

This Saturday, members of the community dialogue and performance project Staten Island OutLOUD, will be reading from the writings of Sandra Cisneros at Freshkills Park. Cisneros is a leading American writer, whose works highlight the urban, Latina-American experience. Excerpts from works including The House on Mango Street will be read in English and Spanish from the top of North Mound, against spectacular views of Staten Island and the Manhattan skyline.

About 2,000 people joined us for the second annual Sneak Peak at Freshkills Park on Sunday, soaking up the incredible fall weather and taking part in the many, many activities we had to offer: making and flying kites, kayaking in the creeks (our registration records show 317 kayakers over the course of the day), walking the site with an expert, riding ponies, petting goats, making bags and birdhouses, learning about recycling and energy efficiency, enjoying the fun music, cool crafts and tasty food and generally celebrating the potential of this fascinating and amazing site.

At last year’s Sneak Peak we were lucky enough to get Mierle Laderman Ukeles‘ iconic mirrored garbage truck, ‘The Social Mirror’ to feature prominently as a preview of public art to come in the future park.  This year, we’re able to deliver a little bit more of that future with a total of 15 art installations throughout the event site, curated with the assistance of the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI). 

Over the course of the various stages of its history, a wide range of professionals have spent time working on or thinking about the Freshkills Park site: sanitation workers, engineers, equipment manufacturers, scientists, policymakers, architects, designers, artists, philanthropists. There are countless layers of expertise to mine in understanding the site. 

Once you work up an appetite kayaking, biking and touring the site at Sneak Peak, make sure to stop by the food vendors for an assortment of tasty grub.  We will have the Vendy Award-winning King of Falafel and Shawarma, Carmelo’s Brick Oven Pizza, and Killmeyer’s Old Bavaria Inn serving up savory fare as well as The Treats Truck, Staten Island Iceman, and Nonie Chu’s Pastries with sweet treats.

There will be plenty of activities and fun and gorgeous scenery at Sneak Peak this Sunday, but it’s important to remember that the Freshkills Park site is a landfill because of us–all of us, and our constant production of garbage.  And it’s important to take this site as an example to act more responsibly. 

The most in-demand activity at last year’s Sneak Peak, by far, was the chance to paddle a canoe around the Freshkills Park site.  This year we began a public kayak tour program at the site and will open up our capacity significantly at this year’s Sneak Peak, this Sunday, October 2nd.